Moto G 2 Reivew

We all know that when it comes to budget smartphones, all that we can expect is tiny devices with unpleasing specifications and small screens. However, this fact changed with the launch of the surprising Moto G, designed to revive the cheap smartphone experience and has become one of the best budget phones one could own. This original Moto G was released towards the end of the year 2013 and to a great extent, revolutionized what people expected from a cheap handset, though it was a compact device with a tiny screen of 4.5 inches.

The successor to the best selling smartphone from Motorola, the 2nd generation Moto G, comes with a large display screen of 5 inches to give you a value performance with big display experience. With the same basic formula from its predecessor, the all new Moto G 2 introduces some desirable changes including bigger screen, front mounted stereo speakers, Android 5.0 Lollipop and improved cameras.

Design &FeaturesThe appearance of the new Moto G 2 is mostly similar to the original model and there is no latest design incorporated. It is made of plastic with a front glossy finish and soft touch matte back finish. This design is a standard approach for any cheap smartphone and this model manages to avoid making it look cheap. You can find no signs of poor quality build and it feels quite strong.

This new model reflects Motorola's amazing build quality with a soft touch, curved back body which makes it comfortable to hold. It measures about 6mm at the thinnest point and 11mm at the thickest and has a feather light weight of only 149g.

The 5 inch screen has innovative front ported dual speakers surrounding it and delivering outstanding audio quality for music and videos. The screen looks beautiful, sharp and crispy with a low pixel density of 293 PPI.

Another addition is the tiny white notification light that is located next to the front camera and remains unnoticed until you receive any update like email or Facebook.

Moto G 2 is available in white and black colors and supports numerous replaceable back shells in different colors. This is a good option for those who like versatility.

When you open the back cover, you see the standard 2070 mAh non-removable battery and a slot for SD card, the feature added to the 4G versions of Moto G. The surprising inclusion of dual SIM cards will also be found here. You get slots for storing two micro SIMs, which can be useful for those having a business and personal number or those willing to use local number to make cheap calls when traveling to another place. Along with this, you get the facility of intelligent calling in which the mobile uses its sense to find out which SIM to use for particular call.

The latest addition is the front facing stereo speakers sitting both above and below the front screen. This is a notable change from the original model which includes rear speakers. This facility makes sure that the sound is properly projected towards the user rather than getting buried at the back.

Screen

According to the company, it considered user reviews for the first generation of Moto G and found that one of the most desirable aspects was a bigger screen. Though the move to a 5 inch screen would disappoint those who crave for small size smartphones, it would please most users.

The screen of new Moto G 2 is still a 720p HD resolution. It comes with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 for protection against scratches and this is always an appealing feature. The only part where it lags behind is the brightness. The screen is not as bright as other similarly priced phones out there but it is perfectly viewable outdoors. On the other side, the contrast is excellent, measured as 960:1. This high contrast level would let the screen generate great detail and the viewing angles are outstanding too.More info

Camera

One of the major attractions of the original Moto G was the primary camera of 5 megapixel. Thankfully, Motorola improves at this with the new model. Moto G 2 comes equipped with 8 megapixel rear sensor featuring LED flash and a front facing camera of 2 megapixel to provide a great selfie-shooter at this price. There is an amazing improvement in the quality of image as compared to previous versions.

You cannot expect the image quality of top models here but it delivers impressive results in the right conditions. And this is facilitated by the camera app it features. This application on Moto G 2 is different from other Android phones and it hides the menu to give you a complete, undisturbed view of the scene. You simply need to take control of the video camera button and camera modes.

Capturing with this phone is pretty simple using the main button on the screen or alternatively, you can use the volume rocker for a faster response. It is possible to adjust the zoom using screen swipes up and down. Holding down on the screen lets you capture multiple shots simultaneously.

The original Moto G had an aspect ratio of 16:9 which is improved with the facility of changing to 4:3. All the old photo modes are available in the new Moto G including Panorama and HDR modes. Color quality and details are much more improved compared to the old Moto G.

You can access settings from the left side where you can swipe up and down to choose modes and other options. HDR mode allows capturing brighter images with high contrast and the automatic HDR option is the one you often find with expensive devices. In this mode, you can enhance landscape photos which have more shadowy details. This feature in Moto G is powerful enough to battle dark elements in your scenery nicely to give desired look to the shots. Far more expensive phones are known to possess worse HDR modes. In addition to this, you can adjust the flash, add location info, control exposure and focus, turn off shutter sound and use the panorama mode.

Camera is designed to capture high quality images in low light conditions to give you better results than expected. Quality of image is much better when captured inside. However, outdoor shots are not bad, especially when you need not shoot in low light conditions.

Talking about video shooting, it allows recording at a maximum of 720p HD, amazing for this price of phones. You can take stills simultaneously and use the new slow motion mode to make things spice up.

Software

The all new Moto G 2 is based on the Android 4.4.4 Kitkat mobile operating system and promises to update to Android 5.0 L. The software runs smoothly and the promise to keep you up-to-date can make this model a considerable option.

Motorola has equipped its new model with all the key applications like Google Drive, Google Play, Chrome browser and Quickoffice, preinstalled. You can find all the standard apps including Clock, Calculator and Calendar as well as FM Radio app for entertainment.

This model also includes the four applications of Motorola which are an additional advantage and pretty simple to use and light on resources. They are kept different-looking than other normal apps with triangular, colorful icons.

The first app is Moto Alert that lets you send emergency alerts to any contact from your list. There is a large red button for sending out alerts to specific location. Other phones have similar alert applications but this one is easy to use and well explained. This app is particularly useful for parents buying the cell phone for their child. This app alerts in three different ways. The first is Emergency where it sends text alerts to specific contacts in case of emergency. You can use it to auto-dial any contact number or sound an alarm in emergency situations. This app keeps track of the places you visit regularly and notes the time of leaving and arriving in cases of work or school and can use this info to alert your contacts when you choose to do so. The second way is Follow Me where the app sends out alert about your current location to selected contacts so that they can know where you are at any specific time. The third is Meet Me which sends text message to your contacts informing them where they can meet you.

The next app is Moto Assist which is not a new name and appears on other Motorola phones. This application is meant to set up your phone to work differently depending on the situations. This program is like an extension to Google Now. For example, when you are driving, it reads out your texts. It will switch your phone to silent mode at night but ring if any of your VIP contacts calls you or somebody calls you twice in five minutes. It sends out auto text reply to the calls you miss during a meeting so that the caller knows that you are busy. It will make use of Google location services, sensor data like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, calendars and GPS.

The third app is Moto Migrate which allows copying content from your old device to this phone, regardless of its type. It can be an iPhone, iPad, Android or the traditional mobile phone. You can use this app to move all your contacts, files, messages and call history from your previous phone to this one.This facility is often neglected but comes handy at times and is good to have here.

The last is Moto Connect which helps managing any other Motorola device from your Moto G 2.

Performance

Considering the inside story, the second generation Moto G is very similar to the original smartphone. Both of them run on a quad core 1.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor and hence Moto G 2 offers the same performance as the previous models. The graphics processor Adreno 305 and 1GB of RAM deliver impressive performance with gaming.

With these specifications, the new Moto G offers an outstanding performance, much better than most phones falling in this price range. Launching applications and navigating through homescreens is not at all a slow process. It runs multiple simultaneous apps without degrading performance. It poses no problem even when running graphics intensive games and you can enjoy them without any trace of drop off or lag in frame rates.

Moto G 2 scores well on benchmarks with 1140 in Geekbench 3, nearly same as the original Moto G and not less than that of the popular phones in the expensive range.

Battery Life

With an excellent battery life, Moto G 2 eliminates the fear of degraded battery performance with bigger screen size, specially when it locks to the same capacity battery. Like any other Motorola phone, you can turn on the Battery Saver Mode from the settings to restrict background data in low battery conditions. When using the phone in general condition with games, web browsing, YouTube videos and other common tasks, it lasts about two days.

On an extreme test, the phone if used to watch a 720p HD video with a brightness of 50%, it runs for about 8 to 9 hours before dying. Charging for 30 minutes using the power adaptor included provides a charge of 30% and this proves it a good charger.

Sound and Call Quality

Talking about the call quality, Moto G 2 does as good as other smartphones of the time. It offers a secondary mic for active noise cancellation and this is an additional feature. The clarity is quite appealing and the person on the other end does not experience any muffling or drop out.

Sound quality is pretty nice owing to the shifting of speakers to the front. The volume is good, at least better than low range phones which offer low quality sound generally.

Android 5.0 Lollipop

The 3G as well as 4G versions of the new Moto G 2 come loaded with Android 4.4 but allow updating to the latest Google mobile operating system, Lollipop, Android 5.0.

If you update to the latest version of operating system, you can expect little changes in the home screens as the Moto G already comes with the stock version of Android. The latest Material design scheme of Google is available and refreshes all the application icons to give a flatter and cleaner design.

Things change more when considering the notification menu and settings of the phone. Settings get combined into a single drop down menu and swiping again gives you access to different shortcuts including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, torch, location, Aeroplane mode, cast screen settings and more. Notifications appear right on the lock screen and you can easily dismiss or launch them once you unlock the screen.

Android Lollipop comes with numerous performance enhancements. The PCMark scores for this system denote the signs of improvement. Moto G 2 scored 2850 with Android 4.4 but with Lollipop, it went up to 3152. Working with emails and documents and editing pictures would get better with Android 5.0.

Competition

Though based on pure power, Moto G 2 has several competitors offering the same package but not so reasonably. One of them is the HTC One Mini 2, featuring the same quad core Snapdragon chipset as used by Moto G and paired with a 13 MP camera. This is surely appealing unless you are told that it is quite more expensive than the latest model of Motorola.

Another worthy competitor is the Desire 510 with the new 1.2GHz Snapdragon chipset and LTE radio. However, it has a 4.7 inches screen with lesser pixel density than the Moto G. For those who can afford not owning an Android phone, there is iPhone 5C, available free with contract and costing a $450 without it. Under the right circumstances, this phone can be affordable.

Moto G 2 – Worth Buying?

One word answer would be 'Yes'. The all new Moto G 2 has a great value for the price and despite the improvements in not all the areas, the enhancements still make it a worthy option among other smartphones in the same price range.

With £150, you are likely to find a choice with lots of compromises on aspects like performance, battery life and screen quality. With Moto G 2, this is not the case. No doubt, the story will be different after a year, but at this time, it is one of those options that tick so many boxes at such a low price.

Conclusion

The Moto G 2nd Gen is a great bargain. It is a phone priced around £140 and offers a number of features of £200 phones, beating them in terms of value. This is not a handset you can fall for and it will neither dazzle you with its mind-blowing features. And that is just fine because the fact is that it is one of the best budget smartphones one can buy today. It is a collection of all the modest improvements that Motorola could offer.